bumper snowflake challenge finale (#14, #12 and #15): past, present and future!!

[serpentinemalign]

hello we have made it to the end of the month and we are gonna do a big speedrun tech. here's some background music for that.

we're gonna go in a slightly altered order. (also some of this was written on my phone so is in proper caps, some is on my laptop and is in lower case. i'm so sorry, there is no rationale behind this.)

please treat this whole post as nsfw and vulgar and click links with caution. i mostly made nsfw art this year lol

Past (challenge #14). Fandom wrapped for 2022!

I have mixed feelings about quantifying my engagement in fandom. I have memory issues that make it difficult to remember things besides the very recent present, and being on twitter for the whole year while still under lockdown conditions for most of it, everything feels so transient. I hope that keeping this journal throughout the year will give me a better sense of what I was into at a particular moment in time. So this is going to be a rough guess except where I can get actual metrics.

What were your top 5 fandoms for 2022 based on the amount of time you interacted with them?

1. In terms of things I produced, DC. Because of Batman 2022, and also because I did my first comic page for a zine and that took a long time!

2. RGG/Yakuza. I did some exchanges and I was most involved as a reader and enjoyer of other people's works.

3. Psychonauts! I didn't post much, but I was recced some wonderful fic, and I started to build a sense of the expanded universe in my head for this canon (primarily so I can ship with Otto Mentallis lol).

4. Barry. This one was a brief and short-lived brainrot. I am desperate for the new season. It's one of those shows that just clicked for me. Half hour episodes on a thriller are perfect.

5. Cytus II. When I got COVID-19 in autumn I spent a LOT of time on my phone playing rhythm games and this one stuck the most and actually got me involved in the story because it is all my favourite tropes. It's a shame the fandom is so small.

What were your top 5 fandom spaces (Discord, Twitter, etc.) you experienced fandom in terms of time spent?

1. Twitter, frustratingly. I'm certain it ate the most of my time. I didn't have a good time here and it is getting worse. that's why I'm here!

2. Discord. I joined some cool spaces, left some others. I closed some doors this year for my health, as an ongoing process in my mental health recovery, but I am trying to open some others and be extra proactive. Joining spaces better suited to me is part of that.

3. Tumblr. 90% of my Tumblr usage was during uncomfortable medical stuff because my dash and tags would invariably make me laugh and make it less horrible to get through. I had a positive experience with Tumblr, even moreso knowing that it will soon be linked up with ActivityPub. That seems like it could be cool.

4-5. ??????? God I hate monopolies. I miss the forum days. I guess technically Neocities is number 4 because I wrote 2 lines of css to change my site to dark mode and then peaced out. I joined some sites in the Twitter exodus, but only Dreamwidth really latched onto me as something I wanted to continue using. The others were just too similar to sites I am not too disgusted to leave yet.

What are the top 5 things you did to contribute to fandom in terms of time?:

So my novel took up most of my creative time throughout the year, but there were some other things!!

• one. hugo strange/joker comic where hugo is in the batsuit and fucking joker!!! nsfw obviously lol. This was for the DC Villains Do It Better NSFW charity zine which is still on sale btw ;) i was so thrilled to get to finish a whole comic page for such a cool project! it's my first comic page with a full stack of detail (ink, colours and shading)!

i learnt a lot from this project! i know now that i have to write a more definitive script before laying down panels as even with thumbnailing with a vague sense of 'oh dialogue will go here'... nothing goes to plan lol. the dialogue and lettering went through lots of changes, and i think in retrospect it is a bit tricky for the eye to follow, although i don't think the order of the hardest to follow text matters too much. i've actually gravitated towards a bubbleless style for dialogue in my comic work since, and i think it fits better for me, because then i can use the negative space in the scene, though i will certainly continue to experiment with this. it's all new and exciting and i'm really excited to do more!!!

• two. this katsuya/watase gift art for an RGG exchange for the lovely carbon_thief on twitter. this one took a while to lay down and was a big learning curve for me.

• three. Participating in artcade 2022!! i am excited to hopefully participate in more trade events this year, especially multifandom ones. it's really fun to be able to find common ground with people and see a little bit into their minds to grant their wishes, and even have a few of mine granted too <3

• four. a little wholesome(?) hypnosis selfship comic with my wish fulfilment oc and my rendition of otto mentallis. otto is a filthy mind control kinkster in my headcanon but wouldn't fuck you in trance without lots of pretalk, even if his sub is horny and game. he is definitely in the 'ace and kinky' category for a lot of people.

i don't know if this comes across in the comic though, because beyond my style lending itself to being extremely dark and gloomy and looking... idk, nonconny? lol. i don't think the narrative is as clear as it could be. i'm learning a lot about how visual storytelling and how continuity beyond single images is... hard! (especially if you also want to visually depict psychic mental influence!) i get pulled up for the clarity of my prose a lot and i just made my problem 10x worse by adding visuals lol. but i'm having so much fun with comics and aesthetically this is one of my favourite things i've ever drawn. <3

• five. Secret Santa gift art in one of my servers :) I am feeling a little unsociable so i will ask for permission to share another time, but it was my first foray into furry art! furry stuff is not generally my thing except with specific characters who happen to be anthros, but it was super fun to try anthropomorphism in my style!

What were your top 5 most appreciated fandom contributions? (i.e. in terms of likes, kudos, reblogs, comments, etc.)

so i was a little hesitant to answer this question because i don't think this stuff matters, and dwelling on it makes me a little sad. nothing really popped off for me this year in terms of my fanworks. the algorithm just feels like roulette, and i don't care for optimising all the best times and keywords and trending tags when i have to do that for, like, my job lol. i'm still in a fairly 'early' stage of learning art, and i feel like i'll always feel that way and maybe that lack of confidence is evident and makes my posts inherently less boostable lol. it's also true that i make fan content for myself and myself alone and i have some very specific tastes that are probably harder to promote to a lot of people. still, these are my top pieces from last year!

also, my hugo/joker comic would technically be in the running but i already talked about it. so i will talk about other stuff.

1. thread: "I think that as writers we tend to have an affinity for a certain type of story and a certain combination of themes and it's stifling to act like that tendency doesn't exist or that it means you're a bad writer for indulging it". a tweet thread that was in response to something silly i saw on my feed and the algorithm of course picked up on my vaguing, the way it also picked up on my enemies to lovers post a year or two back when there was ridiculous enemies to lovers discourse trending. the attention was a little overwhelming but it was nice to read people's responses!

2. art the clown art i drew in 5 seconds no references final destination. still pointing towards the gloomy grey-on-black crunchy aesthetics and textures i love so much.

3. this art of my self-insert mat finish, that is also my icon! made while mainlining studies of akiya kageichi, whom i love. mat is a cross-universe self-insert, a swiss army knife of a slut that i smash onto every single character that makes me feral. at some point i will make a post to explain mat a bit more. and at some point they will have a whole page to themselves on my site. but not today.

4. this hill/west art of herbert being strangled by hill's intestines. yes he has also been lobotomised by hill's technique. what of it

5. i completely forgot i made this. it's a fanvid part with gotham hugo that i made for my partner's 'guy.exe' old-school MEP. i couldn't help myself. <3

honorable mention: 'corpse', my hugo strange dollification nightmare that was also barely concealed angst about mastering out of grad school, was written in 2020, but in 2022 it surpassed the numbers of any fic on my old handle, which i had been publishing between 2013-2017. my most popular fic from that handle was one of the last ones i wrote, for a fandom that was dying at the time, so perhaps it's not such a difficult metric to outdo. but i am still so incredibly grateful to the people who see and appreciate my fics. especially the fics on this account. the stuff i write on this handle is so much more honest than anything i did previously, and the author's notes and outlook are less dripping with guilt and sadness! character development!

Have a Top 5 List you'd like to share?? By all means!

okay top 5 character crushes of 2022:

1. hugo (always and forever.)

2. captain spaulding from the firefly trilogy, which i watched for the first time this year. clowns with guns! clowns with guns!

3. carmine falcone from the batman 2022 but also just the comic one in general. i NEED to read more falcone stories. i am cursed to become attached to literally the most mundane batman rogues. the ones who are meant to be the foils to the campy bastards in costumes. i never thought john turturro could be so fucking hot.

4. colin 'ConneR' neumann jr from cytus ii. imagine the worst and most pretentious man bestowing his opinions on music in youtube comments. okay, now give him an extremely whumpy backstory and make him flirt with his college students. he is catnip to me.

5. art the clown from terrifier! 2022 was truly my clown era. clowns with guns... part 2! i think gothy mime/clown combinations are the hottest kind of clown subtype.

Present (challenge #14). Goals!

In your own space, set yourself some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private.

i said i wasn't gonna do goals this year. i think they can sometimes be tricky for my self-esteem, especially if the goal is too high.

so instead i think it would be better to say what projects i'm planning on working on soon, and not commit to having them finished at a specific time.

1. serpentine redesign! a redesign of my neocities, possibly using a static site generator to generate pages more quickly, but also i'm a bit of a control freak with layout so that might not be what i ultimately do. i might just end up adding a basic auto-responsive css grid framework to make it less of a pain to make new pages mobile responsive. i think i am probably going to maintain the basic design because i like it a lot but just tweak a few things to be more fun and distinctive. some key areas will be:

   • changing the banner depending on which page you're on!

   • individual character, ship and trope shrines!

   • slightly flashier/ornamented design elements, like headers and buttons and dividers.

   • left-to-right scrollable galleries with subsections. since picking up art again in 2020, i now have enough to divide it into subsections! that feels awesome!

   • possibly making as much of the site js-free as possible! (currently the header and footer are loaded in with javascript, but im pretty sure they can be handled in pure html/css and i'd prefer that because i use a script blocker and i get annoyed having to whitelist sites. i don't want other people in that position on my site lol).

2. get graduated commitment, my novel, closer to shipping out. it's going to be self-published so it's just getting it to the position that i feel comfortable with it being out in public and vulnerable! lots and lots of research to flesh it out, inspiration-gathering and just plain restructuring and character building.

3. POSSIBLY. POSSIBLY. record a hypnosis file. i started writing a script last week! it would probably be for my personal use only, but maybe i will release the script or a text only video if i feel comfortable enough, if it is actually effective, and if it's safe for people who aren't me. i want to learn about techniques and, while i've enjoyed self-hypnosis tapes for a long time, i became more interested in the theory because i wanted to mindbreak my characters (including the protagonist of my novel!) more effectively and realistically and i have inevitably realised it is just such a cool skill that i want it for myself.

   • so far, in writing the file i'm working on, i do feel that it's a good match to things my style already does, which is wind around concepts and ramble and be exactingly placed in the present moment, piling on the suspense without much thought to logic or reason. i am finding it tricky to find specific fantasies i want in the vast depths of the erotic hypnosis community so i figure i have to take things into my own hands >:)

4. i am cooking up a psychonauts otto/mat multichapter comic based on the mini-comic i drew, which also expands on the grulovian mob as a little fun worldbuilding. i do hope it catches on because i want FUCKED UP SHIT in this fandom. and also because mat is an assassin in every universe so i have to accommodate that somehow lol.

5. zine 1: all of my fetishy-in-retrospect stories i cooked up as a young'un and didn't know why i was so interested in them, revised and rewritten now i'm an adult.

6. zine 2: i work through all of my backlog of self-insert ideas and publish them as a zine and possibly use the zine to encourage other selfshippers to consider publishing zines with the same theming which is simply: celebrating selfshipping, self-indulgence and getting all your most gratifying ideas out there into the world

7. otto mentallis/sasha nein comic about otto really fucking over sasha and giving him double the issues. these two have a history and it's uncomfortable. i can feel it. i can feel it even down to the lessons sasha instils in raz in psychonauts 2. i need more.

8. another gotham hugo/reader fic, a semi-sequel to option paralysis, this time exploring my medical experimentation kink with a mindfuck angle. not something i've done much with, because it requires more research than other things lol, though i will probably use lots of pseudoscience to be horny, and true to gotham canon. i feel consumed by these images lately.

In your own space, opine on the future of fandom. This can be positive, negative, ambivalent; about fandom as a whole, your own fandom(s), or your own plans. Alternately, what do you hope fandom will do? Imagine a best-cast scenario, and tell us what that would look like.

it's so hard to conceptualise what i want fandom to be. i feel my skin prickling at just the thought of putting all that into words. i think it's just the indignation and fear and paranoia that permeates fandom nowadays. it feels poisonous to talk about, it feels like ruining a good thing even though the good thing is already ruined.

so instead, i want to talk about my engagements in fandom and why i hope to look to a future of making healthier choices about that.

my coming back here was out of a desperation for something different.

to me, fandom feels very isolating and lonely nowadays. there are several reasons for this:

1. i'm sick of joining a fandom and having a whole new blocklist to curate and a million carrds to read.

2. everything is transitory in modern fandom. even prior to the netflix hyperconsumption era of media (which had already begun as i was starting to engage in fandom for the first time, but i guess we weren't at the current peak), i was always a little swept away by fandom people around me speeding through fandoms and trends as they come and go. for me, it has always been dizzying for me. i like to linger and take my time in fandoms and i felt able to do that once, but in modern day fandom it feels like shouting into a void. it's hard to get any sort of feedback about anything i make. i like the idea of leaving behind a legacy of works for future fans to find but i can't do that on twitter!

3. so much now feels like it's about consuming content and holding fandom to the standards of traditionally published literature and art, rather than on self expression and indulgence.

i think i am also lonely in ways that i wasn't prior to 2020. i have hit that mid-twenties thing of drifting apart from friends i had in my formative years. people growing older and moving away... or sometimes growing into people i don't recognise and don't want to know anymore. or me becoming that person. now many of them live too far away for me to see them often. and now with the pandemic, travelling long distances is even less negotiable. it has made internet friendship even more important.

so i need to say one thing: that being here so far has been like coming home. i am so overstimulated by discord communities and twitter that it has been so nice just pottering along, reading people's entries, commenting and replying at a leisurely pace when i have a spare moment. i'm struck by the kindness of the people i have encountered here so far and the sheer amount of tolerance to my nonsense, which isn't really nonsense but is just 'tastes in fiction and sex that i'd get yelled at on twitter for expressing'. thank you. i am so glad to meet you. i hope to be here for a long time.

Comments

[tempural]

Hey!!! Another Hill/West piece!!! Beautiful and strangulicious, I really love the way you use B/W contrast and patterning with linework. Learning how to do (self) hypnosis is really cool. If no one else got ya. Ya gotta cook for yourself! And i'm glad you're finding solace in the slowness of DW here :] hi five, as i am also someone who's overstimmed by chatrooms and twittering.

I'm also trying to figure out SSGs to rebuild my site, especially on the "noscript" end with my nav bar :p But like you, I like having individual tweaks on each page... we'll figure it out!

[serpentinemalign]

aaa thank you so much that means so much to hear!!! <3

and yes!! i think being into countless rarepairs and obscure characters for years has hardened me and now i apply that attitude to every art form lol. year of cooking my own food >:)

i'm so glad i'm not the only one, hi five! i like having the thinking time, it reduces the social anxiety lol. i was looking at my twitter feed today just like "god. this is too much". i do take twitter breaks and usually love it for the week it lasts but then inevitably get hooked again. maybe thats something to work on this year 😭

yesss!! i'm super excited to see what you have in store for your site! im still getting my head around how all this web dev stuff works but itll be fun to experiment with!